Barb appoints Caroline Baxter as Research Operations Director 9 June 2022 Barb, the UK’s television audience measurement service, has appointed Caroline Baxter to the role of Research Operations Director. Caroline joins Barb on August 8th 2022 and will be responsible for ensuring that Barb’s research contractors meet the industry’s expectations of gold-standard audience measurement through delivery of their contractual commitments and ongoing service developments. She joins Barb from Kantar, where she has gained considerable experience overseeing the delivery of major industry research projects, including managing recruitment for the representative panel of homes built for the Barb contract that began in 2010. Caroline will work closely with an Audiences Director; a post for which Barb is currently recruiting. The Audiences Director will be responsible for making sure Barb continues to develop its services, so it delivers the insight needed by its customers as part of their daily decision-making processes. The creation of these two leadership-team roles follows the resignation of Barb’s Research Director, Simon Bolus. During his tenure, Simon has overseen a profound evolution of the industry’s agreed measurement of what people watch. When Simon was appointed in 2010, Barb reported live and consolidated seven-day ratings on the TV set. Barb now reports pre-broadcast, live and post-broadcast viewing up to 28 days; viewing on TV sets, tablets, PCs and smartphones; and viewing on SVOD and video-sharing services. Barb has also established Dovetail Fusion which integrates — each day — its panel data with big data collected from broadcaster’s VOD services. Justin Sampson, Barb’s Chief Executive, said: “Barb is entrusted by the industry to deliver always-on measurement of what people watch. Simon has been the guardian of ensuring we do things properly as we evolve our gold-standard reporting of audiences. Given everything we have achieved during his time with us, he leaves with our deep gratitude and best wishes for what he decides to do next. “We’re delighted to welcome Caroline to Barb. Her strengths and expertise will be invaluable as we continue to deliver audience measurement services that are underpinned by two of the UK’s largest ongoing research contracts.” Caroline Baxter added: “I am absolutely thrilled to be joining Barb at this very exciting time in the field of audience measurement. I look forward to working closely and collaboratively with all the research contractors in the ongoing delivery of the high-quality Barb service.”